Should I play this game?

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Yo guys what's up? So few months ago, I was an active player of a fast paced game called UberStrike but 3 months ago the admins decided to close the game so it no longer exists. Now that I have some time, I'm searching for a new fast paced game so I would like to know why you guys play this game? Is this an active community? Are the admins active and do they care about the game? Is there Quick Switch (like there's no delay when changing guns)? This game has teams? etc.

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The game is about as fast paced as it gets, the community is small but passionate, the devs are releasing updates on a regular basis and there's a 100ms delay on weapon switch (still campaigning to get that removed). Teams, not really, most people play duel and for CTF etc. there are pick ups. The main focus of the game is currently duel, for which there will be a league shortly as well (https://reflexleague.org/).

I recommend you try the game, $10 is pretty cheap and if you happen to not like the game you can just refund it within Steam's refund policy. Make sure to join the discord if you have any further questions or want to find people to play with. https://discord.gg/0SrnNbgr3f9r1CpU

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I really hope that they remove the weapon delay, it would be really cool and since that game I used to play no longer exists, I'm sure that if they would remove weapon delay, this community would really grow since there's a full community searching for a game with quick switch. By the way, is this game still in Beta? Because I saw that this game was created in 2014 but I've read that it was still on beta and that's why the game hasn't been advertised yet, is that correct?

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I think the weapon switch delay is short enough to be acceptable for your community, in most scenarios it's not very noticeable. Also the weapons still have reload times you have to wait for before you can switch weapons, i am not sure whether that is part of quickswitch for you as well.

The game is still in alpha and yes, that is why it hasn't been advertised much yet.

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From what I understood, the (very small) weapon delay was put in to make a very powerful weapon combo a little harder. There's one hitscan weapon with very high RoF but low damage per hit, ion cannon, also called shaft, and one hitscan weapon with a very long reload but high damage, called bolt rifle or rail. You can start a fight with the ion cannon and when you get a strong enough lock with your tracking, you can switch to the rail to deal high burst damage. It's a pretty versatile combo, you can use it in pretty much every situation where you can end the fight before the opponent can punish the long reload time where you can't deal any damage. With the 100ms delay, it's still possible to do, but significantly harder than with instaswitch. In my opinion, the slight weapon delay makes the skill/reward ratio of the combo much better.

Would be really cool if this game had a quick switch like this where you can make combos etc because its very unique and I don't think that there is a game with such weapon switch model. Well if you want to play with me in 4 hours, send me a pm.

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I know what you mean with quick switch, but this doesnt fit with Reflex at all. And you are not right about its unique system, its already used in new doom how you can see in video. Reflex will never like this, i mean the weapons here are different and already make decent damage. With this quick switch it could be everything fucked up.

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i believe xonotic uses a similar system to what you are describing: you dont have to wait for the gun to reload before switching. it also has fast paced gameplay, with bunnyhop based movement and interesting weapon mechanics.

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I came from Half-Life 1 Deathmatch which also allows weaponswitch before reload and it really takes some time to get used to the system used in quakelive / vq3 / reflex... I don't like to wait for reload because I don't get why I would keep holding a gun if I knew it's empty.. makes no sense to me. But on the other hand: You never really have to reload in Reflex / QuakeLive / original Quake 3. Every gun is only balanced via it's firerate, damage, range and type (hitscan / projectile / splash). Personally I like quick switch a lot, because it offers more options during a fight and it makes talented weaponswitcher's fighting skills more effective. But I think that's not what this game lays it's focus on.

Reflex tries to combine aim-heavy confrontations with deep game logic and strategy. It's more about understanding how to handle situations: Attack item or rather surrender that critial item to survive.. If you decide to surrender an item it becomes harder to find your way back into control because armors have insanely long respawn time and you have to think about what you can do to get a better chance of picking up some good upcoming item in the next cycle.. and you have to think about how items respawn. For example it may happen to have all 3 items respawn after each other.. or maybe 2 items spawn on the same time -> you can't have both items.. If weapons dealt more damage and you died quicker, it would nerf that system because armors would be less effective/important. If weapons had reloading like in Half-Life 1 or Counter-Strike, I think it would be really cool, because it would add one more component to take care about when entering a fight and it would push players to use more than only one or two weapons during a fight (it would allow to pick up lots of ammo but at the same time you would not be able to make use of all your ammo while in a fight - if your clip was empty and you had a long reload time, you would have to switch to a different weapon and move/dodge/take position accordingly (it's like dancing, lol).

Another thing that would make Reflex gameplay more flexible was to add more items which give some movement advantages to the player (for example some item like the Longjump Module from Half-Life 1, the Jumpboots from Unreal Tournament, the Jetpack from QuakeLive or the Hook from 3Wave Ctf / Titanfall 2).

But yea.. I know I would like to have things like these added to the game but not everybody is like that: A lot of people prefer to have only small variety and options in gameplay and to have simple mechanics and maps. Some people prefer variety and spontaneous promt action inside a situation (with few/easy long term thinking) and some other people prefer few options inside a situation but more thinking related to player and item respawns. I think both is cool and important inside a game but personally I prefer to have more variety and more easy strategy because it gives me less headache and more interessting close matches because it's always very frustrating to deal a lot of damage and to fight a lot better but lose a game because of bad understanding of when to ideally pick up an item or not to pick up an item. And I think it's more interessting when the in control player can still get killed after an error (even if the enemy is only freshly spawned). The game becomes more dynamic then.

Another thing you should be aware of is the following: The game can look good, but if you want to play good, you have to make your game look shit. To compete with other good players you have to disable sparks, install simple explosions, use lowest lighting and shadow-settings and in the end you won't play a 2016 game anymore.. You will play a 1998 game (visually) but a timeless game. But still it's bad and unfair to be able to customize graphics in this big impactful manner since not everybody will play on lowest settings and each player will have different chances to compete with others depending on settings. Players with higher detail graphics / unmodded graphics (sparks and explosions) will have a disadvantage compared to informed (cheater?) players who removed sparks, installed simple explosions and use a lot of helpful widgets. In my opinion it's not very fair and it should be a controversal topic but in this community it's not because it's an arena fps. On the other hand you have Counter-Strike which is a highly popular and competetive game which doesn't allow much graphic customization (maybe the game is more fair and more popular, because everybody plays on the same graphical foundation).

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Thanks for giving all the information and commenting on this thread. I haven't been able to try this game yet but from what I saw some stuff don't make a lot of sense. I know this is a classic arena shooter but just like the other similar games, I don't see the logic of having 9 (if not mistaken) guns available. You probably don't use all of them. Some people prefer long range combat, some like close/mid range and some like to mix it so why not make only 3 guns available in the loadout + melee weapon.

First of all, classic arena shooters are kinda hard to learn, because of the strafing, the fast paced gameplay, all the armors etc, its all really confusing for a new player in this type of game but hey that's what a classic arena shooter is so we can't remove that stuff, so why not change the one thing that makes more sense? If I ask each player in this community I bet that most don't even use all the guns.

Secondly, there are 2 ways to change guns and both are hard to master or learn when you have 9 guns .

Keys:

It's not that hard to use when you have 3 guns because you can just use the keys 1 - 2 - 3 or 2 - 3 - 4 and the pro is that those keys are near your fingers. But when you have 9 guns you have to go kinda "far" to use the key you want, so you won't be able to choose the gun as fast as you want and well it will take you more time to use the key 7 than the key 2 and that can be fatal.

Mouse scroll:

You can't be very efficient when using the mouse scroll. You need to have experience turning it or else you will probably ending up using the wrong gun. Instead if you have 3 guns, well it would be a lot easier.

In my opinion, this is one of the reasons that the most of classic arena shooters don't have a lot of players now a days. It's hard to learn for newcomers and well they get destroyed by smurf accounts or by experienced players.

I know Reflex is a classic arena shooter but we are in 2016, it's time to innovate. And imo, the innovation of the number of guns available to use is a must.

I'm sorry but I really do no agree with you about some things you've said principally when you talked about adding items to make movement more flexible. The game is already very fast paced and well sometimes it's not that easy to hit someone that has awesome strafing so by adding those items, only the experienced players could stand a chance and the experienced players would be just OP. On the other side, if you did add quick switch to this game, it wouldn't be such a bad idea to add those items, since with quick switch it would be easier to hit the players. I talk a lot about the newcomers because well even if they "suck", it's really important to have them and to have an active community so we should also think about them. I'm talking like I've been here around 4 years hahah but I have experience with classic arena shooters and I was a very active player in-game and in the forums of the game I previously played and I saw all the mistakes the admins made that caused the sunsetting of the game so if I stay here, i'll try to help make this game better with my knowledge.

Otherwise I agree with you when you complain about the video settings of this game and in how it can change the skill of a player. It's really bad that to be pro you have to make your game look like it is from 1998. It has some impacts, some are worse than others. Before buying a game, what does a normal guy do? Check youtube to see if the game is cool. Everyone likes to play a good looking game but imagine if that guy who writes Reflex Gameplay on YouTube opens a gameplay where a pro player is using graphics of 1998, do you think that the guy will still be very interested in the game? Appearance is a very important thing for a game, no one wants to play a game that looks ugly as fuck. Me too, I checked some reflex gameplays and I was like "this game is ugly as fuck, I don't think I'll buy it", but luckily I saw another gameplay with the good settings and then I made up my mind. Sadly, not everyone sees the video with the good settings and end up losing interest in this game.

And well, about quick switch, it's a really cool thing to do combo's of guns, to find what are the best combo's etc but well it's something I can live without.

I will try to get the game today and I'll tell you what I think about it.

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I will try to get the game today and I'll tell you what I think about it.

If you do get the game, be sure to join the official discord channel and ask for some help - I would wager that a few people would be willing to join you and show you a few things, or at least help you get the numbers depending on what gamemode you want to play.

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It's not that hard to use when you have 3 guns because you can just use the keys 1 - 2 - 3 or 2 - 3 - 4 and the pro is that those keys are near your fingers. But when you have 9 guns you have to go kinda "far" to use the key you want, so you won't be able to choose the gun as fast as you want and well it will take you more time to use the key 7 than the key 2 and that can be fatal.

Thats why you dont put the weapons on the number keys, but on the keys around "WASD". For example Q for rocket, E for Bolt, etc... Believe me, after some practice you don't have to think about which key is which weapon; you just do it.

Go and buy the game. Its so cheap. But you should be open for some difference compared to other games.

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If I ask each player in this community I bet that most don't even use all the guns.

I actually think most people do use all the guns. Guns are very situational, every gun has its (situational) benefits. Also, you don't always have all guns available to you, so sometimes there's simply no other option than to use a specific gun.

That said, I don't use burstgun much. I used to use machinegun in quake much more often, for finishes and long distance fights, burstgun seems less effective in similar situations.

I think there's actually 8 weapons, since I don't think there's maps with both stake (weapon9 i believe) and bolt rifle.

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I know what you mean with quick switch, but this doesnt fit with Reflex at all. And you are not right about its unique system, its already used in new doom how you can see in video. Reflex will never like this, i mean the weapons here are different and already make decent damage. With this quick switch it could be everything fucked up.

Fast does not always boil down to mechanics. If it were so, then would you suggest speeding up movement, more air control, maybe give free speed with a dash move? Then it becomes "faster" but the brain thinks less, fights become more like jousting and less intentional. And in a weird way, the game becomes slower... Reduced to mechanical skill and centered around seemingly random encounters.

No, there's speed in doing something precisely and for the right reasons. Ask anyone who plays a musical instrument. Focus first on proper technique, speed will come later. And maintaining proper technique at faster speeds is superior to fast but sloppy playing.

I'm not arguing against instant weapon switch but arguing it is BS to say the game is fast is wrong.

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Fast does not always boil down to mechanics. If it were so, then would you suggest speeding up movement, more air control, maybe give free speed with a dash move? Then it becomes "faster" but the brain thinks less, fights become more like jousting and less intentional. And in a weird way, the game becomes slower... Reduced to mechanical skill and centered around seemingly random encounters.

No, there's speed in doing something precisely and for the right reasons. Ask anyone who plays a musical instrument. Focus first on proper technique, speed will come later. And maintaining proper technique at faster speeds is superior to fast but sloppy playing.

I'm not arguing against instant weapon switch but arguing it is BS to say the game is fast is wrong.

You talk about speed of performance whereas i talk about gameplay mechanics. And yes, i would suggest speed up the movement cause it's been f****d up spoiled since 0.37.

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Maybe we should move this insta switch discussion to a thread of its own? I would really like to have a mutator for this but I think by putting this here we are neither doing this thread any good nor can we milk out some mutation from shooter if we don't give this the exposure it might deserve.

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Fast does not always boil down to mechanics. If it were so, then would you suggest speeding up movement, more air control, maybe give free speed with a dash move? Then it becomes "faster" but the brain thinks less, fights become more like jousting and less intentional. And in a weird way, the game becomes slower... Reduced to mechanical skill and centered around seemingly random encounters.

No, there's speed in doing something precisely and for the right reasons. Ask anyone who plays a musical instrument. Focus first on proper technique, speed will come later. And maintaining proper technique at faster speeds is superior to fast but sloppy playing.

I'm not arguing against instant weapon switch but arguing it is BS to say the game is fast is wrong.

One thing I notice a lot of people don't seem to talk about is that speed is relative. If you upped the walking speed would it make the game more "fast paced"? It would increase speed across the board but I don't think it would change how you act in combat, since both of you have the same movement options available at the same magnitude. I'd argue the real speed of gameplay in arena shooters come down to the physics of knockback and the wide variety of niche weapons at your disposal rather than moving around the map fast.